Click the link to read the article on the Canary Media website (Eric Wesoff). Here’s an excerpt:
September 9, 2024
In the two years since the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed, domestic capacity for producing solar modules has nearly quadrupled, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight report released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie. Generous incentives in the Biden administration’s landmark climate law have driven solar module manufacturing capacity to more than 31 gigawatts. That’s a stark change from August 2021, one year before the IRA became law, when the country could produce just 8.3 gigawatts. The U.S. installed 32.4 gigawatts of solar in 2023, a figure expected to climb even higher this year, meaning the country’s solar manufacturing capacity is now close to matching its pace of solar deployment. The massive expansion of home-grown solar manufacturing ensures that the U.S. is no longer dependent on the market’s hyperdominant supplier, China, for its solar modules. “Module” is the industry term for what’s more commonly known as a solar panel…
Most solar modules are constructed with photovoltaic cells based on polysilicon wafers. While the U.S. has roughly enough polysilicon capacity to meet its needs, it still has no operational facilities that can turn that raw material into the solar wafers and cells that do the physics magic act of transforming light into power. That could change early next year, when Hanwha Qcells starts manufacturing wafers and cells at its end-to-end factory in Cartersville, Georgia. In the meantime, China still makes most of the U.S.’s solar wafers…
Nevertheless, U.S. module capacity continues to expand faster than the rest of the domestic supply chain. Last quarter, production started up at a new Qcells factory in Georgia, a Sirius PV, facility in Georgia, and a Meyer Burger pant in Arizona. Since the IRA was signed, the big names in Chinese module manufacturing, along with more than 30 other companies, have announced plans to launch U.S. factories or grow their current capacity. The recent rush to produce solar panels in the U.S., spurred by the IRA’s cleantech manufacturing incentives, stands as proof that the carrots approach of the climate law is far more effective than the dead-end sticks approach of imposing tariffs on Chinese goods taken by the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.